"Yes'm, the War separated lots of families. Mr. Parks' son, John C. Parks, enlisted in Colonel W.H. Brooks' regiment at Fayetteville as third lieutenant. Mr. Jim Parks was killed at the Battle of Getysburg.
"I do remember it was my mistress, Mrs. Blakely, who kept the Masonic Building from being burned. The soldiers came to set it on fire. Mrs. Blakely knew that if it burned, our home would burn as it was just across the street. Mrs. Blakely had two small children who were very ill in upstairs rooms. She told the soldiers if they burned the Masonic Building that her house would burn and she would be unable to save her little children. They went away."
While Aunt Adeline is nearing ninety, she is still active, goes shopping and also tends to the many crepe myrtle bushes as well as many other flowers at the Hudgens place.
She attends to the renting of the apartment house, as caretaker, and is taken care of by members of the Blakely-Hudgens families.
Aunt Adeline talks "white folks language," as they say, and seldom associates with the colored people of the town.
[1] This statement can be verified by the will made by John P.A. Parks, and filed in Probate Court in the clerk's office in Washington County.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Rose Adway
405 W. Pullen, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76
"I was born three years 'fore surrender. That's what my people told me. Born in Mississippi. Let me see what county I come out of. Smith County—that's where I was bred and born.